“True; there are no such nice distinctions on all occasions; nor are they necessary; but yet there is no chance in the matter. When a duke fees his physician, and his duchess pays her jeweller’s bill, the nobleman does not calculate the expense at which his physician acquired his profession, and the long time he waited for practice; nor does the lady think of the costly stock of her tradesman, and the delicate nature of his workmanship; and yet, these are the circumstances which determine the recompense of each. If it was as easy to be a physician as a plough-boy, there would be as many physicians as plough-boys; and if a diamond necklace required no more capital and skill than a bunch of asparagus, there would be as many jewellers as green-grocers; and then physicians and jewellers would be paid no more than ploughmen and green-grocers.” “But, my lady, we do not want so many physicians as ploughmen.” “True; and it is therefore a very happy thing that fewer can be the one than the other. If we leave the rewards of labour to take their natural course, we shall find that there always turns up a larger quantity of the sort we want most, and a lesser quantity of the sort we want least. In profits, I suppose, Mrs. White, you find less variety than in wages. It is of wages, you know, that we have been talking since we began about the apothecary.” “Why, my lady, there is a disagreeable and an agreeable way of making profits of stock; and there is, I am sure, much more risk in some cases than others.” “Yes; but there is no consideration of the easiness or the difficulty of selling things, or of the trust put in the seller, as there is in the manufacture of the thing sold. A smuggler, or any other kind of speculator, may make more one month, and lose more the next, than the regular trader pretends to calculate; but, I fancy, if we were able to see into the affairs of all the people in this village, or in any town, we should find less difference in what people make from an equal amount of stock, than from an equal quantity of labour. Your rule, of double interest being fair profit, shows this.”